Questions to ask someone who is dying

43 questions to ask someone who is dying about family history

Family history is not dates. It is the stories two generations back that only this person still carries, and the objects that came with them. Ask "what do you want people to know?" first and "what would you rather leave out?" second. Everything else follows from those two.

How to use this list. Ask by voice and record it. One or two questions a visit is plenty; the follow-up ("Who else was there?" "What did she say?" "What happened the day after?") matters more than the next question. The 4 marked tender come last: ask them once, late, in person, with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question.

1. Is there a story about your family that was never told outside the house? Would you tell it now, or would you rather leave it?tenderPut the way out in the question itself. People take the door in more often, not less.
2. Where were you born, and what was the house like that you first remember?A place the reader can stand in.
3. Who was in the house when you were small? Who was in charge, and who did you run to?The cast, and the power in the room.
4. What did your father do for work, and what did you understand about it as a child?
5. Was there a dish your mother or grandmother made that nobody has managed to make the same since?
6. What did your grandparents tell you about their own childhoods?Family stories reach two generations further back than any record.
7. Which of your grandparents did you know best, and what did their house smell like?
8. How did you leave home? Was it a decision or did it just happen?
9. What did your parents think of them at first?
10. What did money mean in your house? Who held it, and what did "we can't afford it" sound like?
11. What do you remember about the day your first child was born?
12. Where were you when the big news of your lifetime came? What did people around you do?History is only worth a page if it touched this person. Ask what it did to them.
13. Did anyone in your family serve? What did they say about it, and what did they never say?
14. What was rationed, scarce, or impossible to get, and how did people manage?
15. Where did your family come from before here, and who made the decision to leave?
16. What did they bring with them, and what did they have to leave behind?Objects carry whole chapters.
17. What language was spoken at home, and when did it stop?
18. What did your parents teach you that you kept, and what did you throw out?
19. Is there a tradition you kept going that nobody else in the family understands?
20. Is there an object in your house that you would run back in for? What's its story?
21. What did your mother keep in her handbag, or your father in his pockets?Small inventory, enormous recall.
22. What did your family's kitchen table hear over the years?
23. What is a saying you use that you got from your own parents?Two sayings, verbatim. The book needs the exact words.
24. What did you wear that meant something? A coat, a ring, a hat you refused to give up?
25. Which parent were you closest to, and did that change?
26. What did Sunday, or the Sabbath, look like in your house growing up? Who insisted, and who slipped out?
27. Was there a recipe written down anywhere, or was it all in someone's head? Whose head?A recipe is an object with a story and an owner. Ask where it is now.
28. What did your father eat for breakfast every single day?
29. What did people at home know, and what did they get wrong about it?
30. What did your mother or father tell you about their war, and what did they never say?
31. What was the journey itself like? How long, what did it smell like, who was sick, who was kind?
32. What did the people back home think you were doing here, and were they right?
33. How did your parents pay for things? Cash in a tin, a book at the shop, the never-never?The tin, the tab and the hire purchase are three different families.
34. Who taught you to dance, and in whose kitchen?
35. Was there a song your mother sang while she worked? Sing a line of it.A recorded line of a parent singing is worth a chapter.
36. Tell me about a family holiday that went wrong. Who was to blame?The holiday disaster is the most-retold story in any family; get the definitive version.
37. What did you send home from a trip: a postcard, a present, a photograph? Who kept it?
38. What did your parents never explain, that you worked out for yourself years later?tenderWhat a child worked out alone is often the truest thing in the book.
39. Was there someone in the family who was not spoken about? What do you know about them?tenderThe unmentioned relative is a door; let them decide whether to open it.
40. What did you find out about a parent after they died that changed how you saw them?tenderThe late discovery rewrites the earlier chapters; the book needs both versions.
41. What did the grown-ups talk about in the 1950s when they thought you were not listening?The overheard adult world is how a child learns what the decade was afraid of.
42. What was the big news story you remember from the 1950s, and what did your father say about it at the table?
43. What did you learn about them from their family the first time you visited?

What these questions are for

A good book about a person needs more than facts. It needs the person on the page: how they talked, what they wanted, what they did when it mattered, the story that shows them. These questions cover 13 of the things a writer needs about someone who is dying: the story that shows them, what they want said, where they came from, objects, places, food, music, key relationships, habits, routines and work, loves and tastes, their place in history, wants, fears and wounds, how others saw them, beliefs and values, their voice and sayings, how they look and move.

More questions to ask someone who is dying

• All questions to ask someone who is dying
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about their childhood
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about love and marriage
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about their work
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about faith and beliefs
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about hard times
• Questions to ask someone who is dying for their advice
• Questions to ask someone who is dying about what they want remembered
• Questions to ask someone who is dying that go deep

Or see questions for everyone else, and how to interview a parent about their life.